Business

What Marketers Can Learn From Whole Foods' Organic Approach to Pinterest

Pinterest is on everyone's lips these days, and many brands are trying to figure out how to leverage the platform as a marketing tool. Fortunately, there are already a handful of brands out there that are doing it well. Pinterest co-founder and designer Evan Sharp told Mashable in December that when it comes to marketing on the platform, "the idea behind your brand makes sense on Pinterest," and he pointed to Whole Foods as a great example.

Whole Foods was one of the first brands on the site, debuting a brand account in July 2011. Since then, the grocery company has racked up 14,421 followers on its Pinterest page. As of this writing, the company has pinned nearly 700 pins across its 22 boards — all of which are curated by Michael Bepko, global online community manager for Whole Foods. For those out there who don't see how Pinterest could benefit their business, here's Bepko's brief explanation: "It allows us to curate images from across the web that really speak to who we are as a company, images that reflect our core values and essentially communicate the essence of who we are."

At a time when consumers are concerned about who they're buying from and want companies to have a soul, it's important to convey this information. Some of Whole Foods' core values are:

Caring about the community and the environment

Promoting healthy eating and education to our stakeholders

Selling the highest quality organic and natural foods available

Creating ongoing win-win partnerships with our suppliers

Thus, the carefully curated boards capture these values in a visually stunning user interface. You might look at Pinterest and think it's really simple, but that's exactly what makes it a great platform: "It’s so easy, it’s so uncluttered and by browsing the images, you can create an emotional connection with somebody around something that you have a shared interest in," explains Bepko.

To make a lasting connection, the goal is not to promote the shampoos, strawberries and steaks that are sold in the actual stores but to communicate the lifestyle that the Whole Foods team aspires to — an appropriate ambition, given that Pinterest has often been likened to a digital inspiration board. And by creating an aspirational lifestyle, Whole Foods can convert casual pinners into brand enthusiasts and, hopefully, customers.

Wondering how do they do it? Mashable spoke with Bepko to find out all there is to know about Whole Foods' Pinterest presence.

The Background

Many brands are already on Facebook and Twitter, and perhaps they also host a Tumblr and even got on board with Google+. So do they really need a brand Pinterest account, too? Bepko says Pinterest fills a niche that had been left empty by the other platforms. "The main difference is that we’re curating images — it's really image-based, as opposed to message-based," he adds.

What's amazing about Whole Foods' use of Pinterest is that within those 22 boards, you'd be hard-pressed to find an actual Whole Foods product — that's not how Bepko curates the site. Rather, he and fellow Whole Foods teammates cruise blogs and follow writers on other social platforms, exposing them to a massive array of content that's relevant to Whole Foods' core pillars. When something strikes a cord, it gets pinned — "Pinterest allows us to share the images that move us," says Bepko.

Not only does this help to promote the Whole Foods lifestyle, but it also gives a nod to bloggers who devote their time and writing to sustainability, upcycling, DIY projects and the environment by putting their work in front of a new audience with every repin. Plus, Pinterest allows this content to be grouped by topic in an easily navigable UI, which isn't easily done on more linear platforms, like Twitter and Facebook.

While Whole Foods as a brand has just under 15,000 followers, you'll notice that some individual boards have upwards of 24,000 followers. The lesson? Careful curation of niche board topics can help you attract a much wider audience, via the search function and a pin's natural course through the Pinterest ecosystem. For example, when someone searches for "kitchen" and finds an entire board devoted to immaculate kitchens — like Whole Foods' Super Hot Kitchens board (above) — he could follow it without also being forced to consume Whole Foods' pictures of heart-shaped cookies, too. In short, Pinterest's board layout enables users to pick and choose what aspects of the brand he wants to experience on Pinterest. As Bepko says, Pinterest is "a fantastic way to build connections with people around shared interests." The connection-building experience makes a great impact, however granular the interests may be.

The Strategy

Whole Foods' Pinterest page started before most people knew about visually-oriented social platform, and its approach has blazed the trails for brands on the sire.

"I began with our core value and worked from there," says Bepko. In general, his approach was more lifestyle-based than product-based. "We’re about so much more than just natural and organic foods, so the boards that I wanted to create needed to represent the varied lifestyles of our brand and of our team members," he explains. One sector of Whole Foods customers is into upcycling and repurposing materials, so there's a board where Bepko collects ideas and DIY projects that are really thrilling for people to take in. For those who don't practice upcycling, they can still appreciate the sustainable practices, the resourcefulness and the potential second life of an everyday item. Given that Whole Foods is a market, there's obviously a demographic of cooking fiends; for them, there's an entire board devoted to dinner recipes — the beautiful imagery really elevates cooking into an art. "It resonates with people who love to entertain and cook and connect with people over the enjoyment of food," Bepko says.

Over time, he's added boards based on seasonality — like fall, Christmas and St. Patrick's Day. Bepko's also been receptive to feedback from the community. After about 20 boards had been populated, a consumer reached out to Whole Foods via Twitter and said it was lacking a board that’s specific to vegan or vegetarian recipe ideas. Of course, the next day Bepko created the Eat Your Veggies board to fill this need. "It’s about paying attention to what people are asking for," he says.

And because the point of Pinterest isn't to push products, but to help people explore and deepen their interests, consumers don't feel like they're being marketed to. "The fans who interact with us there have had a really organic experience with us with who we are — pardon the pun!" says Bepko.

"We’ve really focused on remaining authentic to the space that [Pinterest co-founders have] created and not treated it as an extension of our website or as an advertisement of our products," Bepko says. "I feel that Pinterest can appreciate and respect a brand that recognizes the purpose of their site, which is to share what you’re passionate about and to connect with the community there around common interests." Not to shamelessly self-promote and peddle one's products.

One thing brick-and-mortar companies will have to grapple with is whether they should have one unified branded Pinterest or whether each location should have its own account, with a local flair. Bepko says that there's less of a need to have disparate accounts on Pinterest, because the site isn't a portal for store-specific information, like hours, menus or services, in the way that Facebook and Twitter are. Because Pinterest is just a visual representation of the brand, Bepko says Whole Foods has just one branded presence within the space. However, he has enabled collaboration from individual stores so that teams at each store can contribute pins to the Whole Foods Pinterest boards.

ROI and the Future

So, is all the pinning paying off? Anecdotally, yes. Pinterest is "absolutely" driving traffic to WholeFoods.com, but the team is still working on determining the best metrics for Pinterest — something many brands are grappling with (and a challenge, it should be noted, that is not limited to Pinterest). A few things are certain: Images with recipes do drive visits to the website, and Bepko sees images of Whole Foods recipes floating around the web that have positive recommendations or reviews. "This leads me to believe that folks have taken time to look at the recipe, purchase the ingredients and try the meal at home," he says. At this point, though, it's difficult to trace the purchase funnel from Pinterest to the Whole Foods checkouts.

Since the site — and its use by brands — is still so new, there isn't yet a good way to quantify the ROI. But Bepko is confident that data and analytics will come in due time. For now, he's working on honing in on the community and Pinterest's expanding audience. Pinterest is known for being overwhelmingly female, but its mainstream coverage and seeming omniscience means there more men are joining Pinterest ... and following Whole Foods. For Bepko, that just means an even larger audience to reach and more boards to create.

"It’ll be interesting to see how the dynamic changes, to see how boards change, how the image stream changes," he says. "We'll just adapt the best we can."

In the meantime, Bepko says the biggest challenge is making sure that Whole Foods' participation is relevant and meaningful to the community that’s on the site, which is the perennial challenge on any social, community-driven platform.

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